No Matter
C.J. Subko
Passion. Intuition. Force.
All these and more must I embody today.
Today, today, the glorious day! I skip around my room, making sure that every piece of my artistic endeavor is prepared. Sheets of plastic swathed across the ground. The easel upright in the center. My apron, folded neatly next to a box of paintbrushes.
Follow your instincts. Follow your gut. That’s what the motivational speaker had told me, the lady in the television who speaks only to me.
Passion. Intuition. Force.
With passion I spin gracefully through the space, waiting for my muse to arrive.
Hallo, hallo! I cry, “All ready!” as I know I must, and my model laughs, or I imagine he laughs, perhaps he is nervous, stiff, in position in his chair. He is naked, as models must be, his penis flaccid against his thigh, and I do not stare, that is not professional. I focus instead on his eyes, two rings of amber flecked with malachite. What energies flow through them?
I choose a thin brush with short bristles to render the eyes, the eyes, I paint them first even though I should not. Gloriously hazel and the oil splays across the canvas like blood spurting from a vein.
No matter. I will correct it when it has dried.
What now? What now?
Ah, the thigh. Yes, that bulging thick trunk of flesh. I take a large flat brush and swirl it in pale peach and I slather it along the canvas, rendering it in crude strokes that do not delight me.
No matter. It is impressionistic. I am not recreating him, I am transforming him.
That’s it! Impressionism! I am doing too much to recreate in absolutes, too little to really see.
I take up a medium filbert brush and I jab it into a few different colors and I start on his face, his lovely face, those wide wide eyes and pert nose and soft lips, and I create them in little pokes of color. I am Monet!
I am God.
I am . . . oh, I am making a mess. The splotches are not transcendental, they are messy, and I have made his nose badly.
But there is no sorrow within me, because I am trusting my instincts! Does it matter that I have created chaos? No.
No matter. We have time, time, time.
The chemicals I’ve injected into his bloodstream cause paralysis of all muscles.
He cannot move.
Cannot run from me.
And I will begin again.
The Ace of Wands is the ultimate card of creativity and passion. My main character is following his passions, creating the ultimate art piece—with an unwilling model.
C.J. Subko is a dreamer and a dabbler. She has a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Michigan State University and a B.A. in Psychology and English from the University of Notre Dame, which makes her highly qualified to think too much. Her short fiction has been published in The Crow’s Quill (July 2023), Tales from the Moonlit Path (October 2023), and Negative Creep (Book Slayer Press, 2024). www.cjsubko.com
“No Matter” copyright © 2024 by C.J. Subko
